Posted on 03/28/2003 8:36:26 PM PST by miltonim
TAMPA - A professor accused of being a terrorist group's U.S. leader rallied the support of the Muslim community behind President Bush in 2000 and received security clearances to the White House to discuss Muslim issues, witnesses testified Tuesday.
On the fourth day of a bond hearing for Sami Al-Arian and three others arrested last month, several witnesses testified that Al-Arian was a peaceful community leader who lobbied strongly against the use of secret evidence in the federal case against his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar.
But prosecutors countered Al-Arian's character witnesses, questioning how well they really knew the man accused of leading U.S. operations for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group the government says is responsible for 100 murders in Israel and its territories.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter Furr called Al-Arian and the other defendants the "braintrusts" of the terrorist organization and said Ghassan Zayed Ballut, Sameeh Hammoudeh and Hatim Naji Fariz all reported to Al-Arian.
"This isn't about social activism. This isn't about people's political beliefs. This isn't about whether someone supports George Bush or Humpty Dumpty or anyone else," Furr told the court.
"This is about running a gigantic terrorist organization that kills people."
He wants the defendants held until their trials.
But Al-Arian's attorney, Nicholas Matassini, insisted that the former University of South Florida computer engineering professor is no threat, citing numerous accounts of Al-Arian being cleared to enter the White House as he worked in recent years to lobby for the repeal of secret-evidence laws.
Al-Najjar, a former Palestinian academic, spent 3½ years behind bars in the United States based on secret evidence allegedly tying him to terrorism. He was deported last year to an undisclosed U.S.-friendly Arab country.
Heck, there are people who will tell you what a nice guy Fidel Castro is. This is lame. It's not going to help al-Arian. He's going down.
Unless one uses the other definition of the word, "character", i.e.:
A person, especially one who is peculiar or eccentric: a shady character
Just suitable for performing in prison theatre for about 20 years each.
No dear, those are the Armenians.
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